Mondrian 1872-1944
One of my favourite artists Mondrian has always appealed because of his simplicity and geometric representations. One of the fascinations with the exhibition was the reproduction of Mondrian’s studio in Paris in the mid 1920s , in which geometric forms and primary colours appear not only in his art work but in the furniture and lay out of the room itself.
Mondrian was born in the Netherlands in 1872, attended the Amsterdam academy in 1892 and lived in Paris in 1914 where he came under the influence of cubism.His landscape work (ref: Piet Mondrian.info/mondrian-at-a-glance) slowly gave way to images containing bright colours (ref: Piet Mondrian.info/mondrian-at-a-glance), and finally to his well known images of black straight line grids enclosing primary colours and white (from 1914 onwards).
He gave the name of neo-plasticism to his paintings (which is a term I don’t understand as they seem the opposite of plastic, being rigid in their linear compositions with enclosed colours). He finally left Europe for New York due to the war , where his geometric images continued, developing more “boogie woogie” ref: Tate leaflet accompanying the exhibition and increasing colour.
NeoPlasticism was the term used by Piet Mondrian in 1919 which became synonymous with his images of black grids enclosing carefully placed primary colours and white.ref: moma.org. It consisted of images taken from real life in which shapes were reduced to lines filled with blocks of colour.
composition in white,black and red : (ref:moma)
Straight black lines divide the image into two vertical main sections with two very narrow sections at the sides, horizontal lines produce a grid in the right lower corner between the vertical lines. There are two patches of colour one of red in the lowest space produced by the grid in the lower right and one small one of black perched in the “margin” beyond the left vertical line and the border of the image. The image is crisp and clear, if it is real life reduced to lines it has perhaps turned a chaotic image into a more simple mathematical image. It is attractive because it is smart,however, it feels obsessive and is emotionally quite cold.
composition with yellow,blue and red (ref Tate.org.uk)
A similar image in which black vertical and horizontal lines divide the picture. There seems to be a central block of grid without colour, produced by the four horizontal black lines and above and below this within the same grid lines are blocks of colour-red in the lower right corner, yellow in the upper left anda narrow block of blue which crosses several vertical grids in the left lower part of the image, and almost as though it is hiding,a narrow horizontal band of orange, leaves the image from the left vertical grid line .
Both these images demonstrate the loss of symmetry in Mondrian’s images.
It was revealing to see how Mondrian had changed a sketch of a facade of a building or a tree, concentrating on the linear aspects into an abstract image and interesting to understand where some of his marks had originated :
e.g study for tableau III ref snap-dragon .com is evidently a detailed linear sketch of the front of a building.
the final image (tableau III) being broken down into small boxes and no longer recognisable as a building but with recognisable elements from the original sketch embedded (in similar positions on the paper) within the image.
and study for a tree: ref: snap-dragon.com
leading to the abstract final image “the tree” ref snapdragon.com
I was fascinated by the manner in which he had drawn his self portrait (ref: snap-dragon.com) in 1913 using geometric lines as in his sketches of buildings and trees.
I was also interested to note that his compositions in which a colour is enclosed by a grid,which had in the past seemed so perfectly drawn, actually had indistinct or overlapping colours at the grid edges. i.e. a much more painterly feel than that provoked when standing back from the image.
We are told, in the Tate leaflet accompanying the exhibition that “Mondrian’s drive was to demonstrate the tensions between order and randomness, symmetry and asymmetry”.
I don’t feel any strong emotional stimulation by Mondrian’s geometric work, more of a fascination, a certain peacefulness as that attained by solving a mathematical puzzle, or a warm amusement as provoked by his later American based images e.g. boogie woogie,( ref: moma.org) which interestingly has no black grids and hence I feel is more light-hearted. We are told by the MoMA New York that this image represents New York city’ s grid,movement of traffic and “blinking electric lights” and is influenced by jazz music and its dynamic rhythm.
However I was very interested in this exhibition for its insight into the development of his pictures.
playing with creativity 
